VHSL Regular Season 2013 Part 2 of 2 Round #4
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Günter Grass' Many Uses of Disgust in Die Blechtrommel Massimo Bonifazio
Volume 8, 2017 DISGUST Nausea, ‘the seal of true love’? Günter Grass’ Many Uses of Disgust in Die Blechtrommel Massimo Bonifazio Università di Torino Abstract t the core of Günter Grass’ literary work lies a marked interest for elements normally A thought of as unpleasant, vile, and nauseating. Part of the fascination of his books lies precisely in the possibility of observing the world from a different point of view, that is to say, from a crooked perspective which defies mainstream taste. Die Blechtrommel (first published in 1959) offers a good example of this tendency: Oskar’s decision to remain in a state of extended childhood can be associated with a Freudian reflection on the human psyche, more specifically with the idea of the child as ‘polymorphic pervert’, indifferent to or even fond of things which adults are bound to find disgusting. The use of the grotesque in Grass’ work is strictly linked to dietary elements, such as: the canned fish Oskar’s mother gulps down in order to kill herself, the insistence on entrails, the recurring use of figures of speech regarding food. Through Grass’ work, the idea of ‘disgust’ thus becomes a useful tool for investigating contemporary scenarios in the relationships humans establish with each other and with their history.1 Keywords: Günter Grass, The Tin Drum, disgust, food in literature. he use of ‘disgust’ as a category in order to analyse a literary work may at first glance T seem out of place. Nonetheless, this ‘strong sensation’ (Menninghaus 2003) is a fundamental constituent of our everyday life; it reveals a lot about our ways of being. -
Die Blechtrommel (1959)
ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholmer Germanistische Forschungen 76 Musik in der Prosa von Günter Grass Intermediale Bezüge – Transmediale Perspektiven Beate Schirrmacher This is a print on demand publication distributed by Stockholm University Library www.sub.su.se. First issue printed by ineko, Kållered, 2012. © Beate Schirrmacher and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm 2012 ISSN 0491-0893 ISBN 978-91-86071-88-2 Cover Picture: © Stina Myringer Publisher: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm 2012 Distributor: Stockholm University Library, Sweden Für Signe, Joel und Rasmus, die mich immer auf andere Gedanken gebracht haben Dank Es braucht ein Dorf, um Kinder großzuziehen, ähnlich ist es auch mit einer Dissertation, an der so viel mehr Personen beteiligt sind, als es das Titelblatt suggeriert. Mein Dank gilt an erster Stelle Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre und Prof. Dr. Edgar Platen für die Betreuung meiner Arbeit. Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre war in ihrer offenherzigen Art Doktormutter im wahrsten Sinne, die immer bereit war, offene Fragen, im Gespräch oder per Mail, rasch zu klären und Wege wo möglich zu ebnen; für ihr Verständnis und ihre Geduld in jeglicher Hinsicht bin ich sehr dankbar. Prof. Dr. Edgar Platen danke ich für seine immer hilfreichen Kommentare zu großen und kleinen Fragen der Grass-Forschung und für einen interessanten Gedankenaustausch per Mail. Mein großer Dank geht auch an Dr. Heidrun Führer für die kriti- sche und enthusiastische Auseinandersetzung mit meiner Arbeit im Schluss- seminar; ihr erbarmungsloses Nachhaken hat entscheidend zur Verbesserung der Arbeit beigetragen. Mein Dank geht an alle meine KollegInnen am Institut für Baltistik, Fen- nistik und Germanistik, in dessen freundlicher Atmosphäre inspiriertes, pro- duktives Arbeiten möglich war. -
Novels Recommended for Optional Reading
Continuing Studies POL 142 Hans N. Weiler Winter Quarter 2003/2004 Memo # 2 European Politics and European Fiction: Novels recommended for optional reading Writers have their own way of reflecting on social and political reality, and often provide a refreshingly new and different perspective on the issues that social scientists analyze in their way. Europe and European fiction are a particularly interesting case in point: from the role of women in society to the continued presence of the past, from the attitudes and prejudices of different social groups towards one another to the complex relationship between religion and state, and from the legacies of war and destruction to the challenges of modern technology – there is a wealth of literary testimony that provides important insights in its own right into the complexities of contemporary Europe. In my lecture for the second session of the course (January 13), I will comment on the role of fiction and visual art in studying the affairs of Europe. The following is a highly idiosyncratic list of contemporary European fiction that, over the years, I have found to be not only enjoyable reading, but also a fascinating commentary on some of the key issues that have shaped the Europe of today. All of these books are available in English in the Stanford libraries, quite a few of them also commercially in paperback edition; if all else fails, you can borrow my copy. The list is rather heavily skewed towards German fiction, which reflects not only my predilections, but also a particularly rich choice of German books dealing with social and political issues. -
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100119_05_096_116_r2ks.qxp:100119_05_096_116_r2ks 4/22/11 12:21 PM Page 96 1 N ICOLE T HESZ 2 3 4 5 6 Nature Romanticism and the Grimms’ 7 Tales 8 9 An Ecocritical Approach to Günter Grass’s The 10 Flounder and The Rat 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Ever since his debut with The Tin Drum in 1959, Günter Grass has referred to 19 fairy tales in his texts, using motifs such as the phrase “once upon a time” in 20 what one might call his magical realist prose.1 His mid-career novels The 21 Flounder (1977) and The Rat (1986) target issues that preoccupied Germans in 22 the postwar decades: the battle between the sexes, ecological devastation, and 23 nuclear armament. In particular, Grass draws on the Grimms’ tales that depict 24 human dealings with the natural world. Fairy tales and their characters come 25 to stand as representatives of nature in a struggle against the potential destruc- 26 tion of the earth. The Flounder and The Rat arrived on a “Märchenwelle” 27 (Castein 97) published in the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany. This wave of 28 modern tales took an irreverent look at the Grimms’ collection, opposing pre- 29 vious tendencies to search in fairy tales for “redemption from the past” after 30 1945 (Zipes, “Struggle” 170–74). Like the Grimms before him, Grass appro- 31 priates tradition and reinterprets it on his own terms. Although he draws at- 32 tention to the problematic ideological underpinnings of the romantics’ work 33 with folklore, he shares with them the common desire to use tales as reposito- 34 ries for dreams and better lives.2 35 The Flounder depicts the return to a maternal Eden that was lost when pa- 36 triarchal history began, while The Rat imagines the nuclear and ecological de- 37 struction of the world and its repopulation by rats.